Ex-NBA star Dwight Howard says he was made to delete ‘Free Palestine’ tweet in 2014

Commissioner of the National Basketball Association called within 10 minutes, ordering the athlete to remove the post, Howard tells podcaster, adding, ‘I went against the grain’

Dwight Howard during an NBA basketball game against the Phoenix Suns, on January 13, 2022, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
Dwight Howard during an NBA basketball game against the Phoenix Suns, on January 13, 2022, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

Former NBA star Dwight Howard said on a podcast Tuesday that, after posting the words “Free Palestine” to his X account in 2014, he was immediately barraged with phone calls ordering him to take down the post, including one from the commissioner of the NBA.

“A couple years ago, when I played for the Houston rockets, I tweeted ‘Free Palestine,’ and I dang near got kicked out the league for it,” Howard told podcast host Ray Daniels, as an example of what he said were “a lot of things” that an NBA player bites his tongue about in public.

The 39-year-old athlete told the host he’d had a long conversation with some Palestinian fans in Houston, and wanted to express his support for their community.

“They asked me to just bring some awareness to what’s going on in their country,” he said, adding,  “I want people to know the struggles y’all having. I don’t think it’s wrong. So I tweet ‘Free Palestine.’

“Less than 10 minutes after I tweet that, I get a call from the commissioner of the NBA, agents, people working with my foundation at the time — ‘You gotta erase this tweet, you, gotta take this down’ — I’m like, ‘what did I do that was so bad?” Howard continued.

“I went against the grain, I said something people didn’t like,” he said, by way of explanation.

“Not people didn’t like, they didn’t like,” interjected the podcast host. It was not immediately clear whom he meant.

“When you’re in the league, you’ll be in that place where, ‘If I say too much, if I say something, I may not get a job no more.’ I gotta hold my tongue, and that’s so hard to do,” Howard said.

The story appeared to concern a post made by Howard more than a decade ago, during the 2014 Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Israel is once again at war with the Hamas terror group in the enclave, following the group’s October 7, 2023 attack, when terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

Though the original post was deleted, the subsequent posts — which read, “previous tweet was a mistake. I have never commented on international politics and never will,” and, “I apologize if I offended anyone with my previous tweet, it was a mistake!” remain online.

The incident — which was covered at the time — was not Howard’s last brush with controversy over posts concerning international affairs.

In May 2023, Howard apologized after visiting Taiwan and saying he’d gained a “whole new appreciation of this country,” when he received backlash from Chinese nationalists who refuse to acknowledge the island nation as independent.

“Where I’m from, if I say ‘I want to go to the country,’ it doesn’t mean that place is a country. It’s just how we talk,” he said afterward. “If I offended anyone in China I apologize. It was not my intention to harm anyone with what I said in the commercial.”

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